With its three competitions, ‘Sampark 2014’, the outreach event of ‘Shaastra’, the annual technical festival of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, turned out to be a brainteaser. The second edition was held at Kumaraguru College of Technology here on Saturday.
‘Sampark’ is a series of workshops, events, lectures and qualifiers that are held in cities across India in an effort to bring ‘Shaastra’ closer to everyone.
All three events – auto quiz, puzzle champ, and Project X – challenged the student participants in logic, mathematics and reasoning, rather than on mere engineering. More than 1,000 students from Coimbatore and nearly 400 from other cities such as Salem, Madurai, and Tiruchi, participated in the events.
The event was to reach out to engineering students in Coimbatore and other cities of Tamil Nadu in an effort to motivate them to break boundaries.
Besides the three competitions, workshops on robotics and Rubik’s cube were held. Demonstrations on various interesting scientific concepts were also held. The workshop on robotics gave an insight to students on the advanced electronics used to build modern day robotics. Students learnt to solve the six-faced puzzle at the Rubik’s cube workshop.
The auto quiz, considered one of the toughest challenges in ‘Shaastra’, contained questions on automobiles. Puzzle champ tested the participants’ proficiency in logic, reasoning and mathematics, while Project X made students create a real world entity using icecream sticks, glue and other household items.
According to Anand Babu, Student Co-ordinator of ‘Shaastra Outreach’, the event was a huge draw with all participants receiving a certificate. “The winners were awarded cash prizes and they will also get an opportunity to take part in the ‘Shaastra’ events as a wild card entrant. ‘Shaastra’ will be held from January 4 – 7, 2014.”
